Get ready for the fall…
[Video][Website]
[3.50]
Luisa Lopez: Conceptualizing people as seasons, and love as passing through, always comes across as stupidly effortless, but rarely so skilfully as here. It’s an easy way out, but never fails. One of the most keenly felt turns — culturally, sensationally — is the way heat twists slowly into autumn, which is never cause for regret, or melancholy — not exactly. Instead it’s more of a deadening breath that comes with the recognition of something sweet taking on the skin of something deadly. Perfect for echoes, whimpered harmonies, and messy verses, and this song provides them all in spades.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: “Seasonal” is how we compartmentalize those life experiences that are pleasant but maybe gauche or off-brand: laying out with tabloids, accessorizing with grubby old Rainbows, drinking cider made from multiple kinds of berry, eating deep-fried cod tacos, and liking deeply silly cod reggae. And for something that mashes up the premises of 500 Days of Summer and “I Just Had Sex” as puka-shell rap, “Summer” is remarkably pleasant, wistful like the beginning of Grease. I’m not going to admit to this outside this blog, though.
[6]
Dan MacRae: I shit my pants once on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Carman Country Fair. “My Sweet Summer” somehow left me feeling way more grossed out and embarrassed than that mortifying experience from my childhood ever could.
[0]
Alfred Soto: or: Brad Nowell and Adam Levine fucking on an immaculate bed.
[1]
Micha Cavaseno: Brad Nowell gets revived, turns into a cyborg, and used to terrorize all of America. I always preferred the cold myself, so while this pummels a probably already inebriated audience into senseless oblivion before victimizing them, I’ll be doing my best to make a trip to somewhere they have permafrost and the chances of hearing this at parties will be slim.
[1]
Megan Harrington: Applying a subjective rating system to a song this utilitarian feels a bit perverse. “My Sweet Summer” is skunky, the sort of song that should come packaged with a stick of patchouli incense and a bottle of red-eye drops. It has no pretenses where art or even popular culture are concerned and it succeeds thrillingly as a weed jam for Cali stoners.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: I love Southern California, and the older I get the more I appreciate all the great aspects of my home. However, some of the things I couldn’t get into when I was 14 still make me roll my eyes mighty hard. This song touches on at least three things I hate about the greater Los Angeles area.
[1]
Josh Winters: California, here I go.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: Vaguely reggae-ish alt-pop with an EDM twist? Well, it’s not as bad as MAGIC! at least, so there’s that. This makes me think of downtown Santa Cruz.
[4]
Brad Shoup: “Sand in my bed”?! Not “sand in my beer” or “sand in my beard” to pair with “she left me here”? Absolutely thoughtless; I’m too put off to drag anything out of this lead-weighted reggae-rock number.
[2]
Anthony Easton: Tight little chorus — a little affected, but compared to the rest of the track, seems to have a solid idea at least.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Between the reggae rhythm and distorted distress, this could almost be Romanian — even the title is in the classic mould of vague signifiers like “Shining Heart” or “Midnight Sun.” Were it Romanian the lyrics wouldn’t overstretch themselves like this though: not in scope so much as quantity. Banal is fine in moderation; the extension of it to some kind of story here feels like a delusion of grandeur.
[5]